Thanks for your feedback Ed.  Your frustration is noted (and shared).

I believe part of the problem is because we are trying to please too many audiences with one set of code. 

And to add to that we are straddling across ASP.Net frameworks, and trying to maintain legacy in an app that is over three years old.

I'm sure we'll see some major improvements soon though.

As for the forums, that is pretty harsh, and although you can say the truth hurts, I think Chris and his team deserve a lot of credit for where they are today compared to where it started when he took over on that project.

Also don't count out the fact that there are many third party components (free and commercial) to DNN that can really alleviate some of the frustration.

I've been using DNN extensively since version 2 and I agree that DNN is in a precarious state right now.  I'm recommending to my clients that --- relatively, in DNN terms --- they should not do a lot of heavy customization right now.  However at the same time, looking at one client in particular as an example, he has just in the past few months picked up the basic admin skills for DNN, and he is so tickled pink with it that he isn't even cognizant of those problems.  He's only doing rather simple things...it's not the perspective of an advanced DNN administrator... but for someone out of the general public, he is savvy.  He's run his web site for over 10 years and even simple tasks in DNN terms represent a level of ease and flexibility which I would describe as a mind-opening experience for him.

In my opinion, the changes introduced earlier this summer are great enough to be considered a paradigm shift.  As such, they are bound to be breaking changes in many regards.  I think they represent a great step forward though, and I think that given more time, the stability you and I and probably most of the advanced users in the community long for will eventually return to the platform.  My guess is that a lot of stability wil return by the end of this year, but that it will be this time next year before we see a version comparable to 2.1.2 in terms of its stability. 

I'm not sure I agree with you about having it marked as beta.  I think that might be feasible if it were a platform with a licensing fee, but with the open source model it relies on use and feedback within and from the community in order to move forward.  Maybe if there were a really large contingent of Platinum benefactors providing that kind of use and feedback, fewer, more stable releases could be provided to the rest of the community.  

In any case, with either approach I think there is a caveat which should always apply, with any other platform, open source or otherwise:  anybody planning a business around it should hire qualified help to assess its practicality for their particular needs.  There's a certain degree of due diligence which is simply one's responsibility as a business owner or manager.